This information paper provides an outline of changes to the Job Vacancies, Australia (cat. no. 6354.0) AusStats Time Series Spreadsheets.

CHANGE TO MICROSOFT EXCEL FORMAT

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has introduced a new method of presenting time series data to the AusStats service. The Lotus 1-2-3 time series spreadsheets are being replaced with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. A sample of the layout for Job Vacancies, Australia of the new spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel format (.xls) is attached to this Information Paper.

For the May 2005 issue of Job Vacancies, Australia (cat. no. 6354.0), the AusStats Time Series Spreadsheets are provided in the usual Lotus 1-2-3 format (.wks).

From the August 2005 issue of Job Vacancies, Australia (cat. no. 6354.0), due for release on 29 September 2005, the AusStats Time Series Spreadsheets will only be presented in Microsoft Excel format (.xls).

A concordance between the new tables (Microsoft Excel .xls format) and the current AusStats tables (Lotus 1-2-3 .wks format) is included below.

The Microsoft Excel spreadsheets offer clearer presentation, simpler data navigation and retrieval, and enhanced metadata content over the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. The new format files can be opened, read and manipulated using Excel 5.0/95 (or equivalent), however, some features will not be available unless you have Excel 97 (or a later version).

CHANGES TO SPREADSHEET CONTENT

In addition to the file format change, some of the content of the spreadsheets has changed. These changes apply to the data provided in Microsoft Excel format only:

Table numbering has been changed to agree with the table numbering in the Job Vacancies, Australia publication (cat. no. 6354.0).

Consistent with the other spreadsheets, data relating to Standard Errors has been included in the 'Job Vacancies, Industry, Australia', (Table 4) spreadsheet.

The presentation of the data has changed. For instance, time periods are represented by rows and data items by columns.

CONCORDANCE

NEW AND CURRENT TABLES

Below is a concordance between the new tables in Microsoft Excel format and the current AusStats tables in Lotus 1-2-3 format.